What the World Cup is showing me about grace

Full disclosure: I haven't watched any of the World Cup. Even more shame in my game is the fact that I am deriving this news report from Kathie Lee and Hoda's Thirsty Thursday episode, watched on the treadmill yesterday. Seriously, WHO AM I? Regardless of my newsfeed, one of the most beautiful images I have seen recently hails from the English women's soccer match against Japan. England defender Laura Bassett managed to kick a goal. Into her own goal. Causing her team to fall and hand Japan a 2-1 victory.

Bennett was described as inconsolable. She is obviously shaken to the point of incredulity in the pictures and videos I have seen. How could this have happened? I was perfectly positioned--how did the ball ricochet so strongly in the wrong direction? How was my goalie unable to defend our net?

But then her teammates emerge and tell a different story. They lay hands on her, they shield her entirely, like she is the goal they need to protect. We can imagine their words unspoken. You are our teammate. You made a mistake. Remember all those times you were amazing and strong? This was just one time. We've all been there. We are all here for you. We share in this defeat but our sadness is divided.

Friends, what if this was how we handled a failure in our communities? Instead of castigating the mistake-maker, what if we treated him who has made a public blunder less as a pariah and more as a teammate? What if we rallied around them, blanketed them in mercy, told them how this was just an accident. Reminded him of all the other times he shined, he made a difference for the better on our team?

This is grace in a womens soccer jersey. This is the Gospel running around in cleats.

A 30 second review of Inside Out

"Inside Out," Pixar's newest way to fleece parents of a buck, is brilliant and everyone should see it--even people who think a movie about emotions and core memories is a bunch of psychobabble. There you have it, the only 30 second review you will ever need for "Inside Out."

Trust. It's kind of like when you read Suess's "Oh the Places You'll Go." You thought you were wading in some unexpectedly deep waters of truth. You'll get that feeling again, times forty five.

I will add that one of my favorite parts (no spoilers) is when Bing Bong, an imaginary friend from a girlhood of yore, is riding the Train of Thought and accidentally spills chips that represent facts and opinions. In case you are a robot hard-wired to not experience the blurring of what feels like actual fact and what might be merely an opinion, this moment was a thrill. Because everyone concedes "These facts and opinions look so similar!" I felt so vindicated, having lived with a therapist for ten years. See? SEE! Sometimes they get mixed up, even for animated Pixar people feelings figures, too!

P.S. And yes I do have my next outfit picked out for the costume party.

What #ALLinCLE means to me

I've been digging deep trying to figure out why this NBA championship means so much to me, why every floor seat of my heart seems sold out to the Cavs. It's an odd condition, this late b-ball season fever. Especially now, when I've lived the better part of my life away from Cleveland, Ohio. My reason is, superficially, one that many who grew up in Cleveland share--few of us have ever seen a pro sports championship for our hometown in our lifetimes. But I think this particular championship speaks to a larger narrative, the bigger story that kids from the rust belt know well. When you grow up in a place (think: Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh) where the industry has been steadily leaving since WWII, where the white flight epidemic has been dismantling the rich cultural vestiges of a city, where the uniform offered to the majority of black men is an orange jumpsuit or a suit for his funeral, the hope that Lebron James has offered to Cleveland is a hope of a certain resurrection. His story, the son of a single mother who was given a remarkable athletic gift, inspires us to remember not to buy the lie. The lie that steel was our only export when we know that we manufacture more heart, more resilience on any given day as gritty Mid-westerners than Steph Curry pops out his mouthguard. The lie that bombed-out neighborhoods preyed upon by subprime lenders cannot recover when we know our incredible power to hold Wall Street accountable and to do right by our neighbors. The lie that young people are all bound for destruction, corruption, or death when we know that Gina deJesus, Amanda Berry, and Michelle Knight survived the worst kind of evil and haven't moved elsewhere--they've remained in the city that loved them and will continue to honor their matchless courage. No man or woman, not Lebron James, not Amanda Berry, not Moses Cleveland (the guy who "invented Cleveland"), can single-handedly lay claim to the renaissance of a city or its industries. It is by our hope -- an illogical, irrational, indefatiguable hope--by which we will be known.

It hurt when Lebron James made his Decision to "take his talents to Miami." At the time, it seemed like an impossibly arrogant statement. (The man never runs the risk of being humble.) In retrospect, I hear the echo of a different chorus, though. He may have taken his talents to Florida, but he stored his beating heart in the Ohio that raised him, a state whose monicker was once "the heart of it all." To me, "All in CLE" is more than a clever hashtag that will earmark a certain set of games in history. It's not just the condition that we fans are "all completely invested." It's that we all, we in every zipcode and every exurb and every far-removed pocket from Cleveland, are actually all IN Cleveland. Because that is where our hearts live and from where our exhaustless hope derives.

Back to Believeland Tuesday. I'll hear you there. #ALLINCLE

Photos by Fr. Patrick Anderson